Selkie 637

I wrote the security guard in then out then in then out then in again. I'd like to avoid clutter and drag in the arc vis-a-vis extra character interactions, but I just can't see security NOT responding to a shouting kid.

Discussion (72) ¬

Finally, they’ll get to talk! I can’t wait for Friday.
I have a feeling the conversation will be something like this:
Todd: Andi, you adopted a child? Didn’t you say that was like babysitting?
Andi: Umm, yeah…
Amanda: NO! She’s my real mom! She came back to get me!
and then Andi will have a panic attack.

It’s cute that you think Amanda isn’t going to say something nasty and vicious to Selkie about how having real parents (and her REAL MOM is going to introduce her to her REAL DAD soon and I am SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU) the moment she bounces back from the panic attack.

He wouldn’t say those words obviously, but he might say it in a subtler way, like “I thought you didn’t… feel you were ready for adoption”, or something else that Andi and Todd would both know the meaning of but would sound innocuous to Amanda.
Also, I agree with Rens that Amanda will probably take the opportunity to say something awful 🙂

Oooooo… I think Todd will pick up on more than that. Amanda and Andi look a *lot* like each other. Amanda has Todd’s eyes, too. He can be oblivious at times, but I won’t be surprised if he puts 2 and 2 together immediately.

I love the shell shocked look in Todd’s eyes.
I also like Andi’s wink.
It conveys the “Yes I know I have a hell of a lot to explain to you but just go with me on this one please I’ll explain later.”
I think Todd is a good enough parent that he’ll choke back his explosion of WTF????? so as not to cause harm to Selkie and Amanda.

Yup, it the same old, “Dear, you look like a deer in the headlights” look. Looks like Todd’s brain froze.
Todd: gahhhh
Andi: Todd, we need to talk soon. You’ve been avoiding me.
Todd: Gahhhh!
Andi: Todd?
Todd: Gahhh!
Notice that the difference between a Zombie and Brain “Kronk” is that Zombies say, “Brains,….Brains! Those suffering with brain Kronk can’t manage to speak beyond, “gah”. But at least it is temporary. Being undead is not.

i think you need a bit of calibration… HE has been avoiding HER… NO he BROKE UP with her. you’re not SUPPOSED TO see each other after that… and NOW, Andi has been avoiding HIM.. and literally RAN AWAY from him just now… it wasn’t until the GUARD got involved that she came back…

In a way, I hope the look on Todd’s face is more because he’s stunned to see Andi with a child who calls her “Mom” than it is because he’s just figured out who that child is…

Friday is going to be brutal, because I know darn well Dave is setting us up for a long wait until Monday. 😉 That’s okay. Well written stories are like wizards – they arrive at their conclusion neither early nor late, but precisely when their writer intends them to!

I cannot express how much I love that last panel. “Heya, Todd! How ya been, buddy?” Just…snrk. Hehe. Huge LOL. Huge. The aww-factor of Andi realizing she needs to protect Amanda more than she needs to protect Todd or herself, leading to that terribly unprepared, inappropriate line just gives me the happies.

I think what’s murdering my heart here a bit is panel five. Like, she’s come up with a cover story that for all intents and purposes Amanda seems to be buying, but Andi just can’t stop apologizing because she realized that fast that what she did was a mistake and she genuinely feels so horrible about it. Like as soon as she got away she must have felt like “Oh holy shit, I just ABANDONED my baby… AGAIN.” This whole arc just keeps making me feel more and more sympathetic for Andi. She knows she done messed up, and she’s aware of how selfish she’s been, but she’s trying so hard to do right for her daughter and she’s freaking terrified right now. I just want to give her a hug…

Good time to look up the term “Woobie.” Though I wouldn’t call her a woobie myself. There are multiple woobies in this story, including Amanda, but I think a key factor of woobiehood is that their suffering is largely undeserved (or at least, the ones with extreme but mostly deserved suffering are a variant of woobie rather than the main definition).

Is Amanda afraid of Selkie? Honestly, I would say yes. I think part of her conflict with Selkie is perhaps based on the fact that she can’t parse Selkie into a place her (cough) reptilian brain can identify her. Little Girl orphan? That’s what the adults say. Teeth? Oh, crud. Don’t turn your back on her! I’m not saying that if Selkie had been pink or brown instead of periwinkle that they would have developed a far better relationship, because I think that the basis of their conflict is also that they are too much alike and neither one is willing to back down.

Todd knows that she has a daughter. Even if she escapes right now, he’ll know. He can seek her out on his own time to find out about the situation. That wasn’t the case before. Things are now moving. She can’t stop it. She can only create a slight delay.

HA!! that’s what YOU think… I’ll put my Moxana Points on some other “distraction” that delays the inevitable reveal for at least two more comics… we’ll get at least one more strip of him grokking this, then probably Pohl/Pohl’s wife will get in on the act, with the next one being Amanda going “WTF?! you KNOW this guy?!” and THEN we get the reveal…

Just realized. Amanda’s doesn’t say, “I found you” or vice versa. She says, “You didn’t leave.” There are her abandonment issues/fears right there. What Amanda did could very well have kicked on triggers if Amanda knew it was deliberate. It may very well have as it is.

I think Andi and Todd could easily cover up the fact that Todd thought Amanda was dead by just saying Todd had assumed Amanda had been adopted. There’s really no reason Amanda being a child would really needs to know every awful detail of the past. Todd and Andi could work out the hurt of the lie between the two of them and really their going to need to get over that asap. Amanda’s future well being trumps Todd’s hurt even if it is justified.

I want to elaborate a little : Amanda is a traumatized child. The trust she’s placed in Andi is extremely important and extremely delicate and fingers crossed Todd either won’t put two and two together immediately and if he does he can hold his tongue until he and Andi have a much needed private meeting to discuss all of this. Todd revealing Andi’s lie to Amanda will do nothing but alienate her from her mother and she needs to be able to trust her mother. So if Andi’s lie is ever told to Amanda (and I really don’t think it needs to be) it should be years from now when she’s old enough to handle it not bow at 8 freaking years old. I’d like to think Todd’s adult enough to get this.

andi is going to have to at least partly tell the truth to amanda as soon as possible. otherwise, this situation is tailor-made for a cascade of lies covering lies, and when the edifice of untruths finally collapses, it could destroy amanda completely.

No I really think just the one lie will do. They tell Amanda Todd believed she’d been adopted and they move the hell on. Amanda’s a child and she has the right to have information that will do more harm than good kept from her. Why does she really NEED to know her mother lied to her father about her being dead? Outside of story drama? Just so she’ll be alienated from her mother at an extremely fragile time in her life? When she’s older yeah maybe tell her but right now it’s just not information she needs.

Lying is an art but why should she know the actual truth? So she doesn’t think her dad just gave up on her too (I mean she MET HIM at the orphanage and he picked a different species. Your story immediately falls apart with Amanda’s first question of “Why didn’t he look for me?”). Andi should quietly and privately tell her that she gave her up at birth while her dad was coming to the hospital and then told him that the baby didn’t make it. Todd is going to have a very visceral reaction, not “Oh cool, you found her. Yay!” He may be repulsed or hesitant, livid or depressed, but I doubt he will be even remotely happy and Amanda needs to know that SHE is not the cause of those feelings in her father. Children make their own logic but they certainly aren’t stupid or blind.

I really fail to see how the story falls apart with a follow up question. If Todd were to have assumed Amanda had been adopted years ago he would have had no reason to assume she’d be at the orphanage. So there’s a reason right there for why he wouldn’t have looked for her. At so young an age Amanda couldn’t possibly be expected to understand what Andi did. Todd’s an adult and he’s going to have a hard enough time wrapping his brain around it. I’m honestly a little disturbed that so many people feel this is something Amanda needs to know. She doesn’t. Kids don’t need to be burdened with ever single detail of their parents past bullshit. This is Andi and Todd’s issue to be dealt with. They are the adults here. Just replace “I told him you were dead” with “I told him you’d been put up for adoption.” If Andi HAS to be the bad guy here. I think people are really underestimating the amount id damage Andi telling her young child “I told your dad you died” could do. Particularly when you consider it’s likeky best right now for the Selkie issue that Andi remain the custodial parent. This is a delicate situation. Amanda does NOT need to know everything about everything up front. The kid has enough emotional trauma on her plate.

Also she bought the looking fir seats thing. I think she’d buy my explanation. If Andi wants to come clean later let her do it when Amanda’s old enough to better deal with it after sone much needed therapy.

either way you roll the explanation, Amanda’s going to get hurt. Even with your suggested lie, Amanda will be hurt knowing that her father was content to let her be adopted, and never check up on her again. And then he decides to adopt anyway. How is that going to be less painful?

I don’t think she should say “I told him you were dead”. Note the gentler, age-appropriate language of “didn’t make it”. They even had a baby urn, for goodness sakes. Andi should tell Amanda EXACTLY what her father went through and how much he suffered because of a lie she told. It would be a good way for Andi to segue into “I’m not going to tell lies anymore” and impart a moral lesson. I generally believe in telling the truth unless you have to lie for safety. Amanda’s already broken, telling her the truth will help her understand that it’s not that her parents didn’t want her, but that her mother was scared/pressured by her grandmother and her father who wanted her more than anything was told she was gone. It should cause Amanda more reflection than distress – her mother did a bad thing and felt guilty and got herself together for 8 years to fix it and provide a better life for her child. A much better story than “I wanted to get my old b/f back so I came looking for you.”

I for one am kind of not looking forward to this.
For me it feels like a train wreck about to happen. I do not want to see it, but it feels disrespectful not to acknowledge it.
Foreshadowing of this comic is strong.
So many times I see a show or read something and think I got it figured out 80% of the time, I am wrong.
I hope I am here as well, but it feels like this is going to go bad and kooky Amanda will pay the price again.

I have posted before and am glad to have the chance again. Your work is great, but I hope after the heavy weight of what is happening is over, the characters can heal and some light can shine through again.